


From Embers

by Cambian



Category: Warhammer 40k
Genre: Fan - Freeform, Gen, Warhammer 40k - Freeform, fan fiction, tau - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29970006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cambian/pseuds/Cambian
Summary: A WIP for the Cold Open Fast Fiction 1000 word competition
Kudos: 1





	From Embers

Jaken felt his nose break.

There was a spurt of blood, the sickening crunch of cartilage, hot tears blinding him. He barely felt the followup blow that loosened one of his teeth. He did feel the explosion that went off in his gut as powerful kick sent him airborne.  
He landed, the air driven out of him.  
Never mind the pain, never mind yet another humiliation, what hurt the most was the reminder that he knew, in those bones that hadn’t been broken yet, that he deserved this.  
“Up, Gue’la!” The order was shouted from his opponent.  
Jaken opened his eyes, squinting through the light of the overhead fixtures. The hangar bay was set to its ‘day’ cycle, the light almost blinding, filled with engineers and warriors, giving a wide berth to the sparring match where a crowd had formed to watch Shas’Ui Bera’n of the Cadre’s Breachers wipe the floor with Jaken for the third day in a row.  
Jaken spat a gobbet of blood and slowly got to his feet, ignoring how those of his team that were present winced at the sight of his face. He’d been through worse; in the Planetary Defense Forces he had been a respectable pugilist.  
“Respectfully,” he said, shaking off the dizziness and raised his hands. “I am _Gue’vesa’ui_ , honored, Shas’Ui.”  
Bera’n stood a few meters away in that bizarre Tau fighting stance, hands down at his sides, legs bent. The Tau male was heavily muscled, slightly shorter than Jaken, with that impossible calm all his people seemed to have. Jaken knew it was a facade, they were as passionate and prone to emotions like anyone, he knew this from the rage behind each one of Bera’n’s strikes.  
Bera’n snorted and advanced.  
“That’s it, you blue-bastard.” Jaken muttered and swung; left, then a quick right but Bera’n leaned back before unleashing kicks that opened fresh cuts on Jaken’s forearm. Bera’n was trying to make an opening but this time Jaken was ready. He opened up, let a kick through only to grab Bera’n and yank him into a head-butt with a satisfying crack!  
Jaken let go of Bera’n who went down to a knee, swearing in his own guttural language, hand covering his face.  
“Well?” Jaken’s grin was bloody.  
Bera’n looked up at him, that facade of calm finally cracking as he snarled then suddenly spun, leg sweeping across both of Jaken’s and sending him on his back. Before Jaken could react, Bera’n was on top of him, fists raised to beat the life out of him.  
Which Jaken would have been entirely content with.  
“Enough!” A voice roared across the hangar.  
All eyes turned and then, as one, the crowd snapped to attention save for Jaken on his back. Sub-Commander Shas’El Yu’na approached, her battle carapace gleaming in the light, Tau and Gue’vesa clearing a path before she stopped a hands breath in front of Bera’n.  
Barking in her own language, Jaken heard the Tau’sia equivalent of a chewing out that he didn’t need to speak the benefactor’s language to understand. To Brak’a’s credit, he took it stone faced then placed both hands together in a sign of contrition, bowed and backed away, the Breachers leaving with him. Two of Jaken’s own helped him up.  
Yu’na watched the Tau warriors leave then turned and spoke in halting Gothic, “I watch you beaten for many day, Gue’vesa’Ui Ja’ken.”  
“The Shas’Ui insists on a rigorous training ritual, Lord.” He said sardonically.  
She shook her head, “He… Hates. You know why?” She asked.  
Jaken nodded, “Of course, my Lord, for what… we did.”  
He pointed to the hangar’s launch portal and out into what was left of the world beyond.  
Agrellan, once a glorious Hiveworld within the Imperium of Mankind, home to untold billions, was now nothing but a freezing wasteland like a guttered burn pit.  
A year prior, the Planetary Defense Forces had been mustered to bolster the Astra Militarum yet the Tau had simply swept all before them. When the Commissariat had declared that this was the fault of traitors, they ordered decimations for the rank and file and purges amongst the populace of Hive Primus.  
The Tau had offered safety from these horrors and Jaken, with thousands more, had accepted.  
The Tau had taken the world, renamed it Mu’gulath Bay, and had quickly made improvements to Hive Primus. For the first time in millennia; all had had food and water, medicinals and untainted air. Jaken was told his family would be brought in from the lower levels and brought up to the mid-Hive.  
The memory brought unbidden tears which he brushed away.  
“I do not blame the Shas’Ui and his anger, my Lord. My kind killed many thousands of you Tau.”  
Yu’na tilted her head, the many braids cropped to the side of her head brushing her shoulder, “Imperium kills many many more of your people… No way to measure pain.”  
Exterminatus. That was what they called it.  
The word was high Gothic, a hateful sound whispered throughout the Imperium as the ultimate fate for those worlds that shrugged off the rule of Terra or failed to uphold the defense of His boundaries. But it was a fate for manufactorum worlds, wayward colonies and backwaters. Hiveworlds were fought for. History echoed with the names of fellow Hiveworlds like Armeggedon, Helsreach, and the wars fought to save them. Never should have such a sentence befallen Agrellan.  
Yet, the Imperium had set his home alight after barely a season of fighting.  
Beaten back into orbit by the Fire Caste, the Imperials unleashed a weapon that incinerated the northern hemisphere and slowly burned everything else in raging, continent spanning hurricanes of fire. The oceans had boiled away, the wastelands fused into shining tracts of toxic glass… The Hives incinerated, left as twisted mountains of steel that froze in the coming darkness as the skies choked with impenetrable ash.  
Jaken's family. Gone.  
Only those at Hive Primus and those few areas where the Tau could light their shield generators remained now, weathering and then outlasting the inferno.  
The Sub-Commander turned and placed a hand on Jaken’s shoulder, a strangely human gesture. She emphasized; “You did not do this. We are all to blame.” She placed a hand over her heart. “Now, we survive, fire not dead, we lissera… Together, understand?”  
Jaken nodded and bowed clumsily in the Tau fashion, “I understand, Lord.”  
The Shas’El now laughed, a kek-kek-kek sound as she clicked her teeth-plates together, “There are no more kings, Ja’ken. I am; Shas’El. I command for Tau’va, we are all Tau’va. You understand?” She stepped back and Jaken’s team snapped to attention.  
Jaken smiled and shouted “Yes, Shas’El!”  
“Good.” Yu’na walked away.  
“What should we do now, sir?” One of his team mates asked.  
He wiped his face with the back of his hand. “We check in with command, if they need help, we do it.” Because Jaken knew that by the sheer will these aliens and their incredibly technologies would renew the sky and replenish the seas. They would save his home. _Their_ home; Mu’gulath Bay.


End file.
